


Maybe, This Time

by chamel



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Battlestar Galactica Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Awkward Conversations, Crossover, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Idiots in Love, Mistaken Identity, Misunderstandings, Pining, Reunions, Space Dorks, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26195401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamel/pseuds/chamel
Summary: Din stabilizes the Razor Crest from the wild maneuver he just pulled to avoid the strange object that appeared in front of them, punching some buttons on the console in front of him. There had been nothing on the radar until whatever it was had just winked into existence, which should not be possible. But there it is, on the screen: some kind of odd crescent-shaped craft unlike anything he’s ever seen before. It doesn’t appear to be coming after them, so Din turns the Crest so that they can look at it through the transparisteel screen. The strange ship wobbles uncertainly in space, like whoever was driving it isn’t any more sure of what had happened than they are.(Kara accidentally triggers the FTL drive while flying the Cylon raider, sending her unexpectedly into a galaxy far, far away.)
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Lee "Apollo" Adama/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace
Comments: 19
Kudos: 43





	Maybe, This Time

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is _not_ the AU/crossover that I mentioned before, but a totally different one. Idek, honestly, why it seemed like a good idea to put my main tiny fandom together with a long dead one, but this idea came and, well, frakked me up good, and I couldn't stop writing it. I am currently rewatching BSG, and the other day I was hit by a powerful desire to have both of my favorite badass space K/Caras together (side note: writing this, I became super happy that they spell the name differently). THEN I remembered that Katee Sackoff is rumored(?) to be appearing in Mando season 2, and that got me all excited too.
> 
> I've always been an ardent Lee/Kara shipper, and this is set during Season 1 of BSG when I can still imagine simpler, happy times for them. It's also set during some nebulous time post-season 1 that Din and Cara are traveling together with the kid. Ultimately it's not really an AU for either series, other than some canon divergence.
> 
> You don't really _need_ to know much about BSG for this (I think), but I've included some definitions in the end notes for some of the weird terms and acronyms from that show. Also, check out the ["cover art"](https://cha-melodius.tumblr.com/post/627892469475966976/some-cover-art-for-my-latest-fic-a) I put together on tumblr.
> 
> The title for this fic comes from the Ok Go song of the same name.
> 
> Finally, I know you're all waiting for the next chapter of the unhelmeting fic, and I'm sorry for the delay on that. Next week, I promise!

Lee knows it’s a stupid idea from the very beginning, but if there is one thing that Kara Thrace excels at it is getting under his skin. If there’s a second thing, it’s getting what she wants from people, and none moreso than the Adama boys, not that he cares to admit that. He doesn’t really know how she managed to convince his father that this would be a good idea, or why he’d gone along with it, except for the fact that watching her mope around the ship because she can’t fly is getting exceedingly annoying. Yup, _annoying_ is definitely the right word for it, he thinks.

These are the thoughts going through his mind as he sits in his viper and watches their captured Cylon raider do loops around him. They managed to get a comms link set up so he can hear Kara’s whoops of joy as she does barrel rolls and just plain shows off. Lee pictures the wide, radiant grin on her face and presses his lips together to fight off a smile, but can’t quite stop the dimples from popping out on his cheeks.

It’s just the two of them out here on the edge of the fleet, away from prying eyes on other ships and the many people who would no doubt disapprove of this indulgence. Lee reasons that there are so few moments of real joy these days, that they should take them when they get a chance. It’s been quiet around the fleet, and no sign of the Cylons for weeks, so why not let Kara play in a fighter she can fly with her bum knee? Maybe they’ll even learn something new about the Cylons in the process.

“You just gonna sit there like a lump, Apollo, or do you want to make this more interesting?” Kara says over the comms.

Lee rolls his eyes at her even though she can’t see it. “What did you have in mind, Starbuck?”

“Betcha I can get close enough to scratch your wing.”  
  
“Kara…” he sighs.

“What’s wrong?” she taunts, clearly laughing at him. “You don’t think you can avoid me?”

“It’s hardly fair. I’m in an antique and you’re in a state-of-the-art Cylon vessel.”

“So what you’re saying is you can’t do it.”

Lee grinds his teeth together. He will not let her goad him into this. It’s not safe. It could damage his viper or worse.

“Maybe I’ll scratch my name in the top,” she muses when he doesn’t reply. “Let everyone know.” The raider creeps closer to his ship and gives a little rolling wiggle in front of him. “It’s gonna be really easy if you just sit there.”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” he shoots back, despite himself, sending the viper into a 180° pitch on the spot and flying off further from the fleet.

He hears Kara’s giggle of delight over the comms and curses at himself for giving in. What was he supposed to do, though, just let her? He can see her ship on his display, trailing close behind him, and does a few quick maneuvers to try to shake her. The viper has more power than the raider, but the Cylon ship is far more maneuverable, and the lead he gains doesn’t last for very long. Once she gets close enough that he sees the sharp tip of the raider’s wing inches away from his own, and it’s only a quick reflex rolling away that keeps him safe. The comms are full of her laughter and his, and he’s extremely glad that the link only exists between the two ships.

They’ve been playing keep-away for a while when Lee decides he’s done running and spins his viper around behind her raider. It’s a move he’s tried before, but this time he guns his thrusters and rockets up behind her, stalling just at the right moment to ever-so-slightly nudge the back end of the raider with the nose of the viper.

Kara cries out in delighted indignation as she flips the raider around. “Oh you, did not! You are going to pay for that!”

“So make me,” Lee challenges, turning to fly away, but before he can go far there’s an odd sound over the comms. He hesitates and rotates back slightly to look at the raider.

“Oh frak,” Kara says, breathlessly, and then the raider winks out of existence in front of him.

* * *

“Kriffing hell, what was that?!” Cara curses from the seat behind to him.

Din stabilizes the Razor Crest from the wild maneuver he just pulled to avoid the strange object that appeared in front of them, punching some buttons on the console in front of him. There had been nothing on the radar until whatever it was had just winked into existence, which should not be possible. But there it is, on the screen: some kind of odd crescent-shaped craft unlike anything he’s ever seen before. It doesn’t appear to be coming after them, so Din turns the Crest so that they can look at it through the transparisteel screen. The strange ship wobbles uncertainly in space, like whoever was driving it isn’t any more sure of what had happened than they are.

“Imps?” Cara asks, shooting him an uncertain look.

Din shakes his head slightly. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a ship like this before. Doesn’t seem hostile.”

“Still, we should probably get out of here,” she suggests. “Could be they _are_ , but just stunned by whatever happened. Maybe they fell out of hyperspace?”

“No lanes around here,” Din mumbles, half to himself. He knows she’s right, but he can’t help but be curious. He scans all potential comms frequencies, looking for some way to communicate. At first it seems futile, and then he finds something right at the edge of the useable range. “Unknown craft, this is the Razor Crest. You ok out there?”

The comms crackle for a minute and he thinks maybe he hasn’t actually connected with the ship. Then, abruptly they hear breathing and what must be a curse. “Frak! Uh, Razor Crest, whoever the frak that is, this is Starbuck. Are you… are you human?”

When Din turns to Cara he sees a confused expression similar to the one he’s making under his helmet. It’s certainly an odd way of hailing someone. Cara shrugs, Din shrugs back, and then he holds the comms open again. “Most of us.”

“Frakking hell, you have Cylons on board?” Starbuck’s voice bursts over the comms. She sounds breathless, and there is an unmistakable fear in her question.

“Uh, no? I don’t know what that is,” Din answers truthfully.

“Ok, ok,” Starbuck huffs, clearly relieved. “Can you tell me where we are? My FTL drive just kinda spontaneously engaged.”

Din and Cara exchange another look of confusion. “Narvath Sector. Not far from Iktotch?”

There’s a silence on the other end of the line that stretches so long that Din thinks they’ve lost the connection, until suddenly Starbuck speaks again. “I’m gonna be honest with you, I have no frakking clue what that means. Look, is there a battlestar nearby? Somewhere I can set down and figure out how to get home?”

“Where is home?” Din asks.

The laugh that comes over the comms is unmistakably bitter. “Well that’s a frakking question, isn’t it? Right now? Galactica’s all I’ve got. Should still be in Sector J23R7 with the rest of the fleet.”

This is just getting stranger and stranger, Din thinks. He’s not familiar with any sectors named like that in the galaxy. “Your best bet is probably heading to Iktotch,” Din says. “There aren’t a ton of ships there, but maybe someone can help.”

“I, uh, sorry,” Starbuck replies uncertainly, “how do I get there?”

Din pulls his hand off the comlink and looks at Cara. They’ve just come from Iktotch—another failed attempt at finding the Jedi—and have no reason to head back right away, but whoever this person is, she seems very lost. “Do you think we should help her?” he asks.

Cara shrugs. “I mean, we’re not really in a rush to get anywhere, and she sounds pretty shaken up. We could at least get her to the moon.”

“Follow us, Starbuck,” Din says as he flips the comms back open. “We’ll take you.”

* * *

The barren, rocky moon she lands the raider on reminds her a bit of the one where she tamed the ship in the first place. It’s not a very comfortable thought. What is shocking, though, is that there seems to be a civilization of some kind here: there are low buildings, hacked into the rock, and a few spacecraft scattered about unlike any she’s ever seen before. Was this some other colony she’d never heard of before? Was this… Earth? It seemed unlikely. And anyway, the people in the ship named Razor Crest had called it Iktotch.

Kara kicks open the side panel of the raider and shimmies out of the small space within. She has no idea how she got here, and more distressingly, no idea how she was going to get back. It isn’t like there’s a computer screen she can type coordinates into in the raider. Plus, it seems like she was very, very far away from any known parts of the galaxy. She takes a reading of the air on the moon: breathable, surprisingly. At least she has one thing going for her. She stretches as she stands, wind whipping her short hair into her face, and tries to shake out the tension from being squashed into the raider for so long.

The Razor Crest had landed not far away and she watches it with interest as a ramp lowers on one side. Bigger than a raptor, far smaller than most passenger ships. A private craft, then; there had been plenty in the colonies, though she hadn’t thought there were many of them left. Of course, anything is possible out here, gods know where. After a moment, a figure appears at the top of the ramp: a woman, clad in a strange green and black outfit with some kind of armor on her upper half. From where Kara stands she can see the other woman’s dark hair and what looks like a striped tattoo, banding around her upper arm. She looks frakking strong as hell, Kara thinks approvingly.

The woman catches sight of her and smiles skeptically, as if she’s not sure if Kara is friend or foe, which is fair, Kara thinks. Kara leaves her posture open, nonthreatening. Not like she could do much; she isn’t packing a gun, unfortunately, only her pocket knife. Something tells her she wouldn’t get far with it against the specimen in front of her. A thought occurs to her, then—what if she’s not human, actually? what if the Cylons made some super-soldier model they don’t know about?—and then Kara’s heart practically stops at the next figure that appears on the ramp, all shiny metal.

 _Oh frak, oh frak, oh frak_ , she thinks frantically, looking around quickly. Can she get back to the raider? Could she get it off the ground before they shoot her down? They hadn’t shot her out of the sky before, but then again maybe they just wanted the raider back. And she followed them like an idiot. She practically deserves to get her frakking ass handed to her.

The Cylons—because that’s what they have to be, a skinjob and a toaster, together—descend the ramp, in no apparent rush, and Kara scrambles backward toward the raider. Should she make a run for it? Try to talk her way out? The skinjob appears to have some kind of gun on her belt—as does the toaster, strangely enough—and Kara wonders what her odds are of grabbing one before being shot. She gives herself fifty-fifty.

At her retreat the Cylons stop, and the skinjob has the audacity to look confused. Kara will never get over how realistic they look. She presses her lips together, considering her options. “Look, I don’t know what your game is, but I’m not playing. What do you want?”

“What?” the skinjob asks incredulously. “ _You_ asked us for help.”

“That was before I knew you were frakking Cylons,” Kara spits. “What kind of ship is that, anyway? Some kind of recon craft? Where are we actually? What is this facility?”

The Cylons look at each other, then back at her. “What are Cylons?” the toaster asks.

 _The toaster asks_.

Since when do they frakking speak??

For a moment Kara thinks she’s dead, or dreaming. This cannot be real. Surely she’s back on her bunk in Galactica, having a frakking nightmare, and soon Lee is going to shake her shoulder and tell her to get her lazy ass out of bed.

She swallows hard at this thought. If she isn’t dreaming, if this is real, then he’ll be looking for her. She heard what he was like, what he and the old man had done when she’d disappeared on the moon. This time, though, they’d be walking into a trap. She can’t let that happen. The only thing to do is to try to get back to the raider and hope it has a ‘round-trip’ function on the FTL that she doesn’t know about.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Kara asks, finding her voice. “I could believe you were a sleeper,” she says, gesturing at the skinjob, “that you might not know, but how could this thing not know what it is?”

“Hey!” the skinjob shouts, suddenly angry. Oh frak, she’s done it now. “What’s your kriffing problem? We help you, and you insult us? Call my partner an it?”  
  
Kara backs up more, holding her hands in front of her. “What, so now toasters have genders?” she asks, unable to shut her damn mouth.

The skinjob is on her in a flash, crushing the front of Kara’s flight suit in one powerful fist. “What did you call him?” she snarls.

Well if she’s not already dead, she’ll be dying soon, Kara thinks. But then she realizes her position is not quite as dire as she thought. She makes a grab for the gun on the skinjob’s hip and when her hand closes around the hilt she yanks it free. The skinjob yells in surprise but Kara’s already got it trained on her opponent. A smug smile creeps onto her lips, because Kara has no self-preservation instincts.

“I said,” she grits out, pressing the barrel of the gun into the skinjob’s stomach, “that it’s a frakking toaster. You gotta problem with that?”

“Yeah, I kriffing do,” the skinjob growls back.

(Kara mind takes a weird side tack, wondering idly how Cylons have apparently managed to develop their own swear words, but she doesn’t get far before she’s forced back to the situation at hand.)

“Drop the blaster,” the toaster demands, suddenly part of the conversation again. It’s got a gun trained on Kara’s head, and she knows she’s utterly frakked, but she refuses to drop the gun. Or ‘blaster’, apparently, whatever the hell that means. “Look,” it says, sounding oddly exhasperated, “we don’t want to hurt you. You think we’re Cylons, whatever that means, but we aren’t. We’ve never even heard that word. I’m Mandalorian. She is Alderaanian. We’re both human. Can you just drop the blaster?”

Kara looks out of the corner of her eye at the toaster, which is standing much closer now. It looks a lot less mechanical, and she realizes with a start that the shiny metal is some kind of armor. _He_ (apparently) is wearing clothes underneath, and a _cape_. She’s never seen a toaster wear a frakking cape. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not Cylons, but honestly if they were Cylons they would have just shot her.

The gun slips out of her grip and clatters to the ground. “You’re not a toaster,” she says, like she can’t quite believe it even as she’s saying the words.

“What does that even mean?!” the woman yells at her. With a shove she pushes Kara out of her grip and bends to snatch the gun up off the ground. “Of course he’s not! You’ve never seen a Mandalorian before?”

“No, I frakking haven’t,” Kara shoots back, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’d ask why your armor looks like a frakking Cylon, but I get the feeling I won’t get an answer that makes any sense.”

The woman actually rolls her eyes at Kara as she holsters her gun again. “Are you going to kriffing tell us what Cylons are, anyway?”  
  
They seem to be completely serious, which is shocking, and honestly promising. There’s somewhere out there that Cylons haven’t gotten to. She wonders if they would be safe here. “Artificially intelligent machines,” she explains. “Humans built them, and they revolted. Now they’re dead set on exterminating us.”

“How have we never heard anything about this?” the man asks, speaking as much to his companion as to Kara.

“I guess the same way that I’ve never heard about Mandalorians,” Kara says. “I’m starting to think that jump was a lot further than we ever thought possible. Look, I’m sorry I called you a toaster.”  
  
The armored man shrugs, finally dropping and holstering his weapon. “I’ve been called worse. Maybe we can start again. You can call me Mando,” he says, holding a hand out.

Kara hesitates for a moment, still not completely sure if she can trust them, then decides that she might not have a lot of choice. “Kara,” she tells him as she clasps his hand.

“What a coincidence,” Mando replies, sounding amused. His companion is still standing with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at Kara like she still hasn’t forgiven her. Which, fair. Mando nods in the woman’s direction. “This is Cara.”

Kara lets out a barking laugh at that. “Well, you can call me Starbuck if it’s confusing. That’s my call sign. Most people do anyway.”

“You’re a pilot, I take it?” he asks.

“Best damn viper pilot there is,” Kara answers proudly. “Not half bad at flying Cylon raiders if I do say— what the hell is that?!”

Just when she thought things could not get any stranger, a bundle strapped to the front of the Mandalorian’s chest moves. She’d barely noticed it before, but now a small green head with long pointy ears pops out the top, and now Kara decides again that she actually must be dreaming because that is not anything that exists in reality. It can’t be, right?

“He’s a kid,” Mando answers as he smooths one hand over the creature’s ears. “Well, kinda. We’re trying to find his people.”

Kara watches in disbelief as the child extracts a small, three-fingered hand from the bundle and _waves_ at her. Before she even knows she’s doing it, she finds herself waving back and laughing. “Frak, he’s pretty cute, isn’t he?”

At this comment, Cara can’t seem to keep scowling anymore. A wry smile fights it’s way onto her lips and she finally uncrosses her arms. “You want a drink?” she asks, nodding back toward their ship. “I could use a kriffing drink.”

“Oh hell yes,” Kara answers, grinning broadly.

* * *

Cara’s not entirely sure what to make of the woman who is sitting in the common area of the Razor Crest, feet kicked up nonchalantly onto a gear crate and whiskey glass in her hand. They certainly got off on the wrong foot, but now that their guest seems to have decided that Cara and Din aren’t murderous machines in the shape of humans she is all smiles and snarky jokes. She’s peeled the top of her flight suit down so it hangs off her hips, revealing layered grey and black tank tops underneath and some odd hexagonal dogtags. Her military background is obvious, even if it’s clearly a very different military, and Cara could almost see her in any Rebel barracks.

One drink had turned into several as they traded stories and learned about each other’s civilizations. Starbuck was particularly amazed by their descriptions of the myriad worlds and peoples that lived there; apparently, wherever she had come from was mostly empty besides the humans and the Cylons they created. She seemed determined to learn as much as she could before attempting to return to her people, though she freely admitted she had no idea how she was going to do that.

They’d been talking about Mandalorian customs and laws when the kid finally decided he’s had enough and is ready for bed, climbing sleepily toward his sleeping compartment. Before Cara can think about getting up to go after him in her mildly buzzed state, Din is up and waves to her to stay there. She shrugs and smiles after him, and when she turns back toward their guest she sees Starbuck regarding her with a smile that is difficult to read.

“How long have you two been together?” she asks, nodding after the retreating back of the Mandalorian.

Cara thinks for a minute, humming. “Six months?”

“It must be tough,” Starbuck says mildly. Cara tips her head and furrows her brow at the other woman, not sure exactly what she means by that, and she elaborates. “The helmet… thing. So, what, you just, like, close your eyes? Darkness?”

“Oh,” Cara replies, eyes going wide when she understands just what Starbuck means. “Oh, yeah, it’s not… like that,” she stammers lamely, looking down at the ground. She can feel her cheeks flushing and desperately wishes they’d stop. “We’re not a couple.”

The look Starbuck gives her is full of surprise and skepticism. “Sorry, what?”

“We’re just friends.”

Starbuck actually _laughs_ , like Cara had made a joke, eyes flicking from the door Din had disappeared through and back to Cara. After a moment of awkward staring, her mouth drops open. “Wait, you’re _serious_?”

“Yeah, I am. Is there a problem?” Cara retorts, hackles raising slightly. Why should it matter to this woman whether or not her and Din are romantically involved?

“No, no,” Starbuck says, raising a hand in surrender. She’s quiet for a minute and Cara thinks she’s going to let it drop, but then she doesn’t. “It’s just. You live together?”  
  
“Obviously,” Cara replies, annoyed.  
  
“You’re raising a kid together?”  
  
“Yes.”

“And you look at each other like… _that_ ,” Starbuck finishes, waving her hand abstractly in the air.

“Like what?” Cara demands.

Starbuck looks at her like she’s stupid, which Cara really doesn’t appreciate, and lets out a little giggle. “Like you’re frakking in _love_.”

“You can’t even see his face, how could you possibly know…” Cara begins, but Starbuck cuts her off.

“Girl, please,” she snorts. “I don’t need to. That boy has it bad for you.” Cara opens her mouth to argue back, but Starbuck raises both hands this time, up near her shoulders, one still clutching her glass of whiskey. “Hey, I dunno. I just assumed. Maybe things are different here. If I’m off base, I apologize.”

Cara sits there, staring at the other woman. She wants to say yes, of course she’s off base, that she has no idea what she’s talking about. She wants to say that there’s no way that Din has feelings like that about her because she would _know_ , wouldn’t she, but even as she thinks it she’s not sure it’s true. This is also leaving aside the fact that she knows she hasn’t even denied her own feelings, hasn’t addressed the fact that Starbuck had read her face plainly enough. If it was obvious to her, a stranger, who else had noticed? _Had Din?_

Instead she drains the whiskey in her glass, coughing slightly at the burn of the harsh liquor, and pours herself another. “What about you?” she asks. She might as well deflect, then. “You got someone back home?”

“Nah,” Starbuck answers quickly. She takes a drink and smirks in a way that reminds Cara of donning a set of armor. “I’m too much of a pain in the ass. Besides, not like there’s really time. Running for your life doesn’t tend to put you in the mood for romance.”

It’s Cara’s turn to huff out a laugh, and Starbuck looks at her with her eyebrows raised. “In my experience,” Cara says, “feelings don’t give a shit if there’s time.”

“Fair enough,” Starbuck allows, raising her glass in a small toast before she downs it.

“It’s late, for us at least,” Cara says, pushing herself to standing. “Anything remotely like a bunk is spoken for, but you’re welcome to stay on the ship. Somehow we’ve acquired a stupid number of blankets and pillows. We can try to help you figure out how to get home in the morning, though I’m not sure how much help we’ll be.”

Starbuck nods as she stands, stretching slightly. She runs a hand through her short blonde hair and looks toward the ramp. “Yeah, my internal clock is really off here. I think I’ll go mess around in the raider, see if I can figure how to work the FTL drive.”

“Sure that’s a good idea?” Cara asks, gesturing with the empty glasses. She’s certainly buzzed, and she can’t imagine that the other woman isn’t feeling the liquor, although she appears to be holding it rather well.

Starbuck chuckles softly. “Eh, can’t do much from the ground. But maybe I’ll take a walk first.”

“Suit yourself. You need anything, just yell.”

* * *

“I’m _going_ ,” Lee insists, gritting out the words through a clenched jaw. “It’s not up for discussion.”

“Like hell it isn’t,” Tigh snarls in reply.

His father is just standing there, like he always does, waiting for people to have it out in front of him then swoop in and somehow invalidate everyone’s arguments all at once. For once, Lee wishes he’d pick a side at the beginning. He’s pretty sure his father will let him go, but right now Lee has to stand here and fight with the XO over it for frakking appearances sake.

“We are not sending the CAG on some wild goose chase after a viper pilot who’s gone missing,” Tigh argues. “How many times is it now? We can’t keep running after her.”

“This wasn’t her fault,” Lee protests.

Tigh sneers at him. “Oh, please tell me who’s idea it was, then. Playing games in dangerous Cylon technology at the edge of the fleet. You were there, were you not?”

“Enough!” Adama barks, interrupting before Lee can argue back. “What’s done is done. We have a good idea of where she went, don’t we?”

Lee nods tightly. “My viper recorded some kind of transmission before the raider jumped. It seems to be a set of coordinates, but it plots far outside any known space. If we take a raptor, we should be able to get there by making the jumps in series.” He doesn’t say how many jumps. It’s a _lot_.  
  
“So you’re proposing to jump into somewhere we can’t even map,” Tigh says, not done with his fight. “You have no idea what’s there! You could jump into the middle of a planet!”

“Statistically, that’s not very likely,” Lee replies as calmly as he can. “We jump to where Kara did, we find her, we bring her home. We’ll be back long before the fleet is ready to move on from the tylium asteroid.”

“You still haven’t explained to me why _you_ are going. Send Boomer and Crashdown, and be done with it.”

Lee opens his mouth and closes it again. It’s not an argument he has a good counter for. _Because I feel responsible_ is not going to cut it. Neither is _because I’m in love with her, gods help me_. The latter one he can barely admit to himself. “I’m going,” is all he says.

“Bill,” Tigh says, exhasperated, turning to the Commander. The words _‘talk some sense into your son’_ are implicit.

They are waiting for his decision, and after a moment his father gives a small nod. Lee presses his lips together in a tiny victorious smile and turns on his heel, heading for the flight deck.

Boomer is incredulous that they are actually doing this, but she’s also the best raptor pilot they have, so she shrugs and says of course she’ll go. Lee suits up and forgoes the ECO’s seat for the co-pilot’s chair. They’ve already plotted the jumps out to the edge of known space, and beyond that it’s just a shot in the dark anyway. A sudden burst of nerves clenches at his chest, unlike anything he’s felt in a long time. He knows that the feeling has nothing to do with the jumps and everying to do with Kara. They’ll find her. They have to.

Lee is, fortunately, proven right when they finally jump to the coordinates transmitted by Kara’s raider. They end up in empty space, and there’s no sign of the raider or anything else. Unbidden, the bitter thought occurs that maybe Tigh was right about this being a wild goose chase. Maybe they weren’t coordinates for her location at all, just a random set of numbers. He sees Sharon look at him expectantly, waiting for him to make a decision.

“Let’s scan the area,” he suggests. “If there are any planets or moons, maybe she landed on one.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Boomer says, flipping switches. “You wanna run the scans from the back?”

Lee nods and moves back to the ECO’s seat, flipping on the monitors. He vaguely remembers how they work from pilot school, and anyway how hard could it be? In front of him, a huge array of buttons and switches, mostly unlabeled, sit waiting. He flicks a few, mostly at random, and is rewarded when one of the displays switches to ‘Scanning.’

They set out a grid and begin scanning the area around them; the planet and moon pop into the edge of the scanner field after about a half hour of work. The moon at least seems like it might be semi-habitable, and Lee releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He knows he shouldn’t let his hopes get up too much, but he can’t help it. They haven’t found her yet, but it’s something.

“There’s a settlement here,” Boomer tells as she pilots the ship toward the moon. Lee looks over her shoulder at the monitor, and sure enough, something like buildings and aircraft seem to be popping up on the scans. “It’s… weird.”

“What do you mean, weird?” He slides into the chair next to her and looks out the windscreen at the moon coming into view. It looks pretty desolate.

“None of these energy signatures match anything we know about. Not human, not Cylon.”  
  
“That’s impossible.”  
  
Boomer shrugs. “Apparently not, sir.”

The settlement is difficult to see from the air; it’s only because Lee knows it’s there that he can pick out some of the low structures in the rocks. The aircraft are easier to discern, sitting mostly exposed on the surface. There aren’t many, but the variety is staggering, no two alike. He’s never seen anything like it.

“What _is_ this place?” he murmurs.

He and Sharon seem to spot the raider at the same time, right as the raptor punches toward a cloud heading toward the settlement.

“Apollo, look—!” Boomer says exitedly, pointing toward the crescent-shaped craft sitting on the surface.

Lee can’t help but let out a little victorious whoop. “She’s here! Boomer, we found her!”

He feels like he’s going to crawl out of his skin by the time they land. The raider is sitting next to a good sized ship, and suddenly he’s overcome by the idea that they don’t know that this civilization is friendly. It could be Cylons, for gods’ sake, despite the energy signatures. Just because the raider is here doesn’t mean _Kara_ is. He shakes the thought out of his head, unwilling to consider it. He makes sure his gun is cocked and within easy grasp all the same.

“The air appears to be breathable,” Boomer tells him. “Gravity within normal levels.”

Still, they exit the raptor in full suits and give their onboard instruments a few minutes to confirm it before they pull their helmets off and leave them on the ship. The wind whips through Lee’s dark hair, fine grands of sand stinging his face. He can’t believe anyone _lives_ here. Maybe they don’t, not really: the area seems quite deserted except for the ships on the surface. The absurd thought occurs to him that they might just have to go knocking on doors, but before he can put it to voice a hooded figure appears from almost nowhere, approaching their ship. Lee and Sharon exchange a look, and he can see her hand hovering near the gun on her hip.

The figure stops a little ways from them and shouts something against the wind that they can’t understand. After a moment, the figure’s shoulders make a movement that almost looks like a sigh. “Kriffing humans,” he grumbles, raising gloved hands to pull back his hood. “I said, ten credits to use the landing field!”

Lee and Sharon are utterly frozen by the sight of him. The man in front of them is roughly the size and shape of a human, but there are two enormous horns emerging from either side of his head and curling down toward his shoulders. His skin is reddish, and two yellow eyes, set deep under large brows, regard them with a look of pure annoyance.

“You must speak Basic,” he says, voice a gravelly as the ground they stand on. “Are you just dumb? Do you understand what I’m saying?”  
  
“Y–yes,” Lee stammers finally. “We understand you.” He doesn’t quite know how it’s possible, but they do.  
  
“Ok then,” the alien says. He holds out one large, clawed hand, palm up. “Ten credits, or you can land outside the protective field.”

“Wha—,” Lee says, looking around. He can’t see any kind of protection in place, and whatever it is, it’s not protecting them from the scouring sand. “We don’t have— what are credits? Is that your currency?”  
  
The alien snorts in disbelief at them. “Not from around here, are you?”

“No,” Lee answers uncertainly.

“Look, I can’t be giving free landing, even to foreign idiots. You need to leave.”

“Wait,” Boomer jumps in, “we’re looking for our friend. That’s her ship, over there. How did she pay you?”

The alien looks to where she’s pointing and then back at them. “She didn’t. Mando did a job for us, so we didn’t charge them for the night.”  
  
“Who is ‘Mando?’” Lee asks.

The eye roll the alien gives them is one of the most bizarre things Lee has ever seen in his entire life. How an expression can be so familiar and so strange at the same time, he will never understand. “You really are idiots, aren’t you?”

“Look,” Lee shoots back immediately, his voice raising. Some of the shock of the situation is wearing off, and now he’s just getting pissed off about being constantly insulted. “Just because we’re not from around here, doesn’t make us _idiots_.”

The alien does not look convinced. “But your inability to understand how payment for services works _does_. Would you prefer imbecile? Moron?”

“Insult us again and you’ll regret it,” he snarls. Lee likes to think he has a cool head—Starbuck’s needling notwithstanding—but he’s exhausted and still sick with worry, and so he finds himself unable to stop from getting into shouting match with an alien life form. _This is just great_ , some still-rational part of him thinks.  
  
“I would, but you’re too stupid to understand.”  
  
“ _That’s it!_ ” Lee shouts, barely registering that Sharon has grabbed his arm to hold him back from doing something, well, completely idiotic.

“Frak me! Lee?! Is that you?” a familiar voice calls out from behind him, and Lee feels his heart jump up into his throat.

He turns, alien completely forgotten, and _runs_ over to grab her in a hug. He doesn’t care how undignified it looks, doesn’t care who sees (and really, it’s just Boomer, because the creature hardly counts), doesn’t care the message it might send. She’s _alive_ , and that’s all that matters. He closes his eyes and buries his face in her hair, and Kara laughs at his antics before hugging him back, letting him spin her around in a circle.

“Frak, man, you’d think I came back from the dead,” she teases. He pulls back to look at her, but doesn’t let her go. Can’t seem to make his arms release her.

“What is this, number three? Or four?” he huffs. “I’m starting to think you’re secretely a cat, Kara. Nine lives and all.”

She grins broadly at him. “Well then I have five left, yeah? Nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t even,” he warns, and his voice is a lot tighter than he’d like it to be.

Kara’s smile falters slightly, like she’s just picked up on how serious he actually is, despite the joking. Abruptly he realizes how close they are, still wrapped in a hug, faces only inches apart. Her eyes flick unmistakably down to his lips, and oh gods, does he want to kiss her right now. But as much as something deep within him says _go on, do it!_ , the reasonable, logical part of him helpfully supplies a million better reasons not to. High on the list is that they seem to have developed an audience.

“Leave off them, Tajil,” someone says from behind him. The voice is odd, modulated, like it’s coming through a speaker.

Lee's arms finally loosen around Kara and she—somewhat reluctantly, he thinks, he hopes—pushes out of them, running a hand through her hair and biting her her lower lip almost tentatively. Her eyes flick back to the other people, and when he turns he can’t quite parse what he sees. The alien creature seems to be talking to… a Cylon? No, it can’t be. For one, Kara would be losing it if that were true. For two, he can see that the figure is a man, not mechanical, merely covered in a lot of armor.

A similar set of thoughts seem to be going through Sharon's mind as she stands not far away, gaze moving constantly between where Lee and Kara stand and the rest of the assembled people. She’s scooted back toward the raptor protectively, as if she could stop anyone from damaging it if some conflict were to break out. He meets her gaze and she gives a short nod, barely visible. She’s ready if things go sideways.

The remainder of the small crowd is composed of another alien creature that has emerged from gods know where, and a powerfully-built dark-haired apparently human woman who seems to be associated with the armored man. The look she’s giving them is shrewd and amused, like she knows something he doesn’t, and he has no idea what to make of that.

“Lee, Sharon, this is Cara and Mando,” Kara tells them as she leads him over to the other pair. The alien creatures are departing, now, apparently satisfied with whatever the others told them. “They found me when I came through the jump and helped me out.”

“And by found she means we almost ran into her ship,” the woman—Cara, funnily enough—says with a smirk.

“Thank you,” he tells them sincerely. He knows the wide, relieved smile on his face must look frankly absurd, but he can’t bring himself to care. “It’s not an easy job, keeping this one out of trouble.”

Kara punches him in the shoulder, hard, and he winces as he laughs. The other Cara’s face is unmistakably smug for reasons he cannot fathom.

“We should get back to check on the kid,” Mando says to his Cara.

Lee is a bit surprised, honestly. These two are obviously warriors of some kind, kitted out as they are in armor and unconcealed weapons, but apparently they also have a child. Lee feels something clench within his chest; generally he doesn’t allow himself to daydream about having a family of his own, especially after the Cylon attack. Especially not now, when he can so clearly imagine the partner he’d want to share it with.

“I was just gonna take a look at their map of the galaxy,” Kara says, shocking him out of his thoughts and nodding at the good-sized ship not far from her raider. He’s been standing there long enough that the pair is already walking back toward the ship. “Wanna come?”

“Gimme a minute to secure the raptor,” Boomer tells them. “I’ll be right behind you.”  
  
Lee nods at the raptor pilot and falls into step beside Kara, trying to get a handle at the swell of emotions churning inside of him.

“So how’d you find me?” Kara asks casually. She kicks a rock in front of her, hands jammed in the pockets of her flight suit. Lee thinks maybe he should stop staring at her, but when he tries to look away he feels his eyes drawn back, like he’s afraid she’ll disappear again.

“Your raider transmitted the coordinates before you jumped,” he tells her. “Not sure if they all do, and we just haven’t been listening, or if it was something you did.”  
  
“Well, frak if I know,” she says with a snort. “Honestly I have no idea how I was going to jump back without being able to plot anything.”  
  
“And you never could plot a jump to save your life, even in a raptor,” he smirks at her.  
  
“Ha ha,” she says dryly, but she’s grinning at him. Then she narrows her eyes, and her scruitinzing gaze is a little uncomfortable. “I’m shocked the old man let you come after me.”

“Of course we were going to come after you,” he replies indignantly. “You know he wouldn’t leave you…”

They’re standing near the open ramp of the ship now and she pauses, putting a hand on his arm to interrupt him. “No, Lee. I’m surprised he let _you_ come.”  
  
“Oh,” Lee says, feeling suddenly awkward. “I— well, ah, wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Of course not,” Kara laughs, looking away from him and biting her lip. “Lee, I—”

“You two coming?” Cara calls from the top of the ramp, and Kara jumps a mile.

Lee desperately wants to know what Kara was going to say, wants to grab her arm and pull her back, but instead he just stands there as she jogs up the ramp. He drops his head and shakes it at himself, then climbs up after her.

* * *

The Razor Crest isn’t equipped with a way to display a large map of the galaxy; Din’s never needed one, traveling on his own, and the maps on his console in the cockpit have always been sufficient. Now, though, he regrets the lack of it, because there’s simply no way to really get across how big the galaxy is to people who apparently have never been in it before. He doesn’t really understand how their ships travel long distances, but somehow Starbuck managed to get into the Expansion Regions without traveling through the Outer or Mid Rim, which should be impossible.

Making matters more complicated is the fact that the cockpit isn’t really _that_ big, and four adult humans is frankly pushing the limits of comfort, especially when they’re all crammed around one small map. Cara has wisely chosen to stay below with the kid, who has managed to nap through the arrival of the visitors.

“We’re here,” Din says, navigating the map to the Narvath Sector and tapping one finger on the dot for Iktotchon. He zooms out a bit to show more of the galaxy. “This is the Core Region, and the furthest edge that we have mapped is just outside the Outer Rim, here.” He taps a few buttons, and a series of green dots appears on the screen tracing out a line that arcs across the map. “These are the coordinates of your ‘jumps’.”

The points were provided by the woman named Sharon—call sign Boomer, apparently—who he’s gathered is the pilot of the small transport ship sitting in the landing field. The other two are apparently fighter pilots, and the man, Lee, is apparently the high ranking officer among the three of them. Sharon defers to him, but Din can’t help but notice that Starbuck decidedly does _not_ , at least not in any meaningful way. He can tell it’s not malicious, or a lack or respect—just the opposite, in fact. They’re too close, have a friendship too strong to stand on formality.

Din knows Cara would disagree with this assessment on one point, because she told him, when they were walking a back to the ship.

“That girl is a liar,” she had said, chuckling softly.

Din had not known what she was talking about; nothing about what Starbuck had told them seemed false. “What do you mean?”

“She told me that she didn’t have anyone back home. Which is clearly banthashit.”

“You think they’re involved?” Din asked, glancing back over his shoulder at Kara and Lee.

Cara had snorted. “You think they’re not?”

“Maybe they’re just friends.”

“And maybe it will snow on Mustafar,” Cara shot back. She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I was sure he was going to kiss her.”

“But he didn’t,” Din had pointed out. “What if they haven’t actually admitted anything to each other?”

She shrugged. “That’s possible.”

“Maybe he’s not sure about her feelings and doesn’t want to risk the friendship,” Din said. He had, in that moment, abruptly had the uncomfortable feeling that maybe they weren’t talking about their strange visitors anymore. “Maybe he hasn’t found the right time.”

“There’s never a right time,” Cara asserted. “He should just take the plunge. Tell her how he feels.”

“What about her? She could always take the first step.”

Cara had looked at him, face inscruitable, then bit her lip and looked away again. “Well, maybe she’s also afraid of ruining what they have now.”

“That’s quite a situation they’ve gotten themselves into,” he’d said.

“Yeah,” she answered quietly.

Then she’d gone to call to their visitors from the top at the ramp, and he’d gone to check on the kid, left with a feeling that something significant had happened between them. He’d be terrified if it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t have time to be; Kara and Lee had come aboard, Sharon following soon after, and now he was wrapped up in the problem of getting them home.

“You were lucky,” he tells them, pointing to the third dot on the map. “You just missed an asteroid field on this jump.”

“How did you do this in one jump?” Lee asks, looking at Kara.

“Frak if I know. Sir,” she replies, tacking on the honorific with a cheeky grin.

“Maybe the Cylons have a lot longer ranges on their FTL drives,” Sharon suggests. “We don’t know much about their tech.” She looks up at Din. “You can’t plot the other points?”  
  
He shakes his head. “They’re far out of our mapped space. I’ve heard of people trying to travel out that way, but usually they don’t return.”

“So if we just jump back the same way we came, we should be safe, right?” Lee asks Sharon.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Wait,” Kara jumps in as she looking between them in confusion, “I still don’t know how to control the jumps.”  
  
“Obviously you’ll just come with us in the raptor,” Lee tells her, brow furrowing slightly.

“I can’t just leave the raider here,” Kara protests. “The old man will kill me for losing it.”

Din watches as Lee opens his mouth and closes it again, like he’s not sure quite what to say to this. “Kara, you are _not_ jumping in that thing,” he says finally. “You could end up in a whole different galaxy! Again!”

“Look, I think I have it almost figured out, if you just give me a few more hours…”

“We don’t have hours, we need to get back to the fleet. I’m the CAG, I can’t be gone that long.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Kara snaps. “I didn’t _ask_ you to come after me, _Captain_. I was doing fine here.”

Lee’s eyes flash with obvious hurt and anger. “Well I’m sorry if I was _concerned_ about you when you disappeared in front of my frakking eyes!”

“I was unaware that you’re _unfamiliar_ with how FTL drives work,” she retorts. “You know the fleet will be fine, and so does the old man or he wouldn’t have let you go. Give me an hour, then—”  
  
“No!” Lee says sharply. Kara stares at him, mouth hanging open like she wants to continue arguing, but for some reason she doesn’t. “Kara, I can’t…” he trails off, glancing around to everyone watching. Din kind of wishes he could fade into the background of his own ship. Lee’s eyes meet Kara’s again, and he apparently decides that he doesn’t care who’s listening. “I can’t lose you,” he says, somewhat brokenly. “I can’t take that risk.” He clears his throat softly and sets his jaw. “Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” Kara answers quietly. All the fury has gone out of her eyes, replaced by something softer, and Din wonders how much longer whatever is going on between them will be able to simmer below the surface. A heavy silence settles over the cockpit, Sharon studiously inspecting the map as Lee and Kara stare at each other.

“You know, raptors do have a limited towing capacity.” Sharon’s voice makes them both jump, but seems to snap them back to the problem at hand. “Even through jumps. I could probably carry the raider through, but I’d need it stabilized before and after. It would require some pretty tricky flying, keeping the raider so near the raptor, but…” she trails off, looking between the two other pilots.

“I can do that. Sir,” Kara says, voice slightly clipped.

Lee sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, leaving it mostly covering his mouth. “I know you can,” he mumbles, voice muffled, as he stares down at the map without really looking at it. He drops the hand. “Ok, ok. Fine. Can’t hurt to try once at least. I better not regret this.”

“You won’t,” Kara answers brightly, grin growing on her face again.

* * *

Honestly, Kara is _really_ not looking forward to spending that much time crammed in the raider, considering just how many jumps it’s going to take to get back to the fleet. Add to that the fact that they’re unlikely to find anywhere to set down partway through, so once they start they won’t be able to change their minds and abandon the raider. She’s in it for the long haul no matter what. There’s something about the raider; she can’t imagine losing it, after all the time they’ve spent together. It’s more like a horse than a ship. She wonders if something about the Cylon tech is frakking with her mind.

She wiggles herself out of the raider from where she’s been prepping it for departure. There’s not much to do, to be honest, but she likes to check through the systems anyway. She’s pretty sure she’s figured out where the FTL drive trigger is so she can at least avoid it.

Lee is standing near the ramp of the Razor Crest, talking with Mando and Cara about gods know what. Somehow she thinks it has something to do with her, based on the way he looks over in her direction and then quickly away again. She lets a small smile curl onto her lips, even though the thought of what he might be saying has made her insides twist uncomfortably. He’d been wearing his heart on his sleeve since they found her, and she isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

It doesn’t really matter, in the end. They’ll return to the fleet, back to their designated roles, and bury whatever feelings worked their way to the surface back down again. Fraternization is, after all, against the rules, particularly between the CAG and one of his pilots, and Lee is nothing if not a rule follower.

Kara tries not to let herself feel bitter about losing something she never really had in the first place.

She walks over to where the Mandalorian and his partner stand with Lee, and finds herself unaccountably jealous of their lives. She’s never regretted a moment of her time in the military, has always felt more at home in the cockpit than out of it. But then again, a life like Mando and Cara’s has never even been in the realm of possibility for her, and now that she sees it, she wonders if one day it could be. Her own ship. Her own family. She looks at Lee, beaming at her so brightly she feels like she needs to squint, and her heart aches.

“Thank you again,” Kara says, smiling at the pair. “I wish I could repay you somehow.”  
  
“We wouldn’t accept it,” Mando replies simply, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Cara sends an affectionate smirk his way and nods. “I’m not sure we were that much help, anyway.”

“Are you kidding?” Kara scoffs. “I’d probably still be flying in circles if you weren’t there.”

“Regardless, we hope you have an easy trip back to your fleet,” Cara says. “If you ever make it back this way, look us up, ok?”

“Of course,” Kara replies. “I really feel like I should see more of this galaxy than this godsforsaken moon.” Shooting a glance at Lee, she tilts her head slightly. “Ready for this?”  
  
He huffs out a laugh, looking down at the ground and then back up at her. “As I’ll ever be. Walk you to your ship?”

“What a gentleman,” Kara teases. She’s rewarded by a substantial flush blooming across Lee’s cheeks.

Before they can depart, though, Cara steps forward and places a hand on her arm, giving a slightly nod off to the side like she wants to speak to Kara in private. Kara is, of course, nothing if not curious, so she follows a few steps away. The other woman clasps her hand and pulls her slightly closer, and when she speaks her voice is low and conspiratorial.

“There is no right time, ok? Just consider it,” she says.

Kara pulls her face back slightly in surprise and stares into Cara’s knowing smirk. She had no illusions about what the other woman had learned about Lee’s affections, but she had thought she kept her own more reigned in. Apparently not. It would be distressing, but she has another card to play. After a moment she allows a matching smirk to twist her own lips, then leans forward again.

“I’ll consider it,” she allows, “but only if you take your own advice.”

Cara laughs at that and brings her other hand up to pat Kara on the shoulder, shaking her head slightly. “Ok. I promise.”

Kara glances over to where Lee and Mando stand next to each other. Lee is wearing a look of curiosity and confusion, and she likes to imagine a similar one on Mando’s hidden face. When they walk back over she lets her shoulder bump lightly against Lee’s, a small smile playing on her lips.

“Shall we?”

Lee nods, thanks Mando and Cara again, and follows her over to the raider. They pause outside and she turns to face him. She can see Boomer through the front windshield of the raptor, prepping for the launch, and the ramp of the Razor Crest closing. Soon all of this will be a distant, strange memory.

“Thank you, Lee,” she says sincerely. Her eyes drop to his hand and she reaches forward across the narrow space separating them, twining their fingers together. Then she looks up into his face and gives his hand a squeeze, hoping it says… _something_ of what she’s feeling. “For coming for me.”

Lee’s eyes have gone very wide, his face full of surprise and only slightly masked delight. Suddenly she wonders if this is the right idea, to give him this much hope, but then again she’s not often accused of making the best decisions, especially where Lee is concerned. Before she can stop herself, she yanks his hand toward her and he takes a stumbling step forward. She catches her other hand behind his neck and pulls his lips against hers for just a moment.

Maybe it’s a mistake, and maybe it isn’t. It would be so easy to give into this, to kiss him until she forgets where she ends and he begins, and she knows nothing else will ever be enough. It takes all her strength to pull away before he’s even fully processed what happened. She stands for a moment, biting her lip, then gives his hand one more squeeze before she drops it and climbs into the raider, leaving him utterly stunned behind her.

* * *

“Spying’s not very polite, you know.”

“I’m not spying!” Cara protests, but she feels her cheeks flush all the same. She sits back in the seat behind Din slowly, like she hadn’t been straining to see through the transparisteel to where Kara and Lee stood outside her strange ship. Well, she’d seen enough anyway.

Enough to know she was in trouble, if she was interested in keeping her promises. Which, as a rule, she was.

“I think they’ll be ok,” she muses as Din punches buttons and preps the ship for departure. The kid coos at her from the other seat, and she reaches over to pull him onto her lap, running a thoughtful hand down one of his ears.

“Who will?” Din asks distractedly.

Cara huffs at him. The man could be uncommonly dense sometimes. “Our new friends,” she tells him.

“I’m sure they’ll get back,” he says. She’s pretty sure he’s willfully misinterpreting her statement. “They seemed to have a solid plan.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Din’s had freezes above the controls and he turns in his seat to look back at her. “Oh?”

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she says, letting the corners of her lips curl up ever-so-slightly. “About time.”

“Time?” He tips his head at her, clearly confused by the seeming non-sequiter, and she has to fight to keep from laughing.

“It seems like the right time, doesn’t it?”

She can practically see the blank expression on his face. “For what?”

“Sesid is supposed to be beautiful,” she says instead of answering. “What’s say we take a little break?”

“A vacation,” he says, like he can’t believe she’s actually suggesting it. She gives a small shrug in response, and he lets out a little chuckle. “Ok, sure. The right time for a vacation.”

 _The right time for us_ , she thinks, hugging the kid closer. She’ll tell him when they get there.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Helpful BSG definitions:**  
>  Viper—a fighter jet  
> Cylon raider—the Cylon's fighter, usually run by its own artificial intelligence; Kara's is "dead" and she controls it from the inside of it's "body" (pretty much as gross as it sounds)  
> Raptor—a recon/scouting ship  
> FTL drive—Faster Than Light drive, allowing ships to "jump" from one point in space to another instantaneously. Raiders and raptors have FTL drives, but vipers don't. There's a limit to how far ships can jump in space.  
> Skinjob—what the humans call Cylons that take a human form  
> Toaster—what the humans call robotic-type Cylons, used as combat units. Think battle droids. From a distance, Din's helmet and armor look a bit toaster-esque.  
> CAG—Commander, Air Group; the senior pilot aboard a battlestar  
> XO—Executive Officer; second in command aboard a colonial fleet vessel  
> The Old Man—a nickname for Lee's father, Bill Adama, Commander of the fleet and the Battlestar Galactica  
> ECO—Electronic Countermeasures Officer, operates much of the computer equipment on a raptor
> 
> So, there you go, my very first crossover. Thank you for endulging me, lol. If you enjoyed this I would love to hear from you! Your comments mean the world to me!


End file.
